The Art of Tetman Callis

“Some people speak of the infant’s love for its mother; how clever they are to name that sleeping-and-waking, the dependencies and dreams, as love. I don’t think there is any possible single name for the life-and-death mind-and-language thing of a woman with an infant. The nature of almost any real moment makes almost all theory a sweet, maybe boyish farce far gone in willfulness. The comfort and shock of using tremendous abstract terms as truth—when how can they be true? in what way can they be true?—permits us to explain a fleshly event without having to toy with the enormous emotions of actuality.” – Harold Brodkey, “Largely an Oral History of My Mother” (emphasis in original)